'One phone call and a wealthy, solvent club is saddled with £300m debt'

So a season that began with a lively legover is ending with a traumatic takeover. If Sven-gate shook the rafters at Soho Square the arrival of a Yankee at the court of Sir Alex is already rocking Old Trafford to its foundations.

Sven-Goran Eriksson's dalliance with a secretary at the Football Association and the subsequent departure of its nooky-sharing chief executive Mark Palios filled the columns and airwaves for a gleeful period but left football and its supporters largely unmoved.

Malcolm Glazer's final push to gain control of Manchester United, however, is something else altogether. One phone call and a wealthy utterly solvent football club has suddenly been saddled with £300m of debt.

Naturally reactions have been extreme. For United fans the fact that Glazer had been trying to buy United for more than 18 months has not made his moment of triumph any less palatable.

The demos have been renewed in earnest. There is talk of making the FA Cup final against Arsenal a week today a platform for protest. Supporters are threatening to boycott matches and the club shop next season.

Sir Alex Ferguson's position remains under scrutiny. In March David Gill, United's chief executive, backpedalled furiously after admitting in a radio interview that the manager was sackable. Ferguson himself has already thought aloud about how much longer he wants to stay in the job. Glazer may help him make up his mind.

Perhaps the idea of Manchester United being controlled from Florida via a junior Glazer will clarify those thoughts. One way or another Alex has had better weeks in football, what with his team performing a moribund lap of honour in a half-empty stadium after losing their last home game 3-1 to Chelsea, the new champions, followed by an FA charge of improper conduct for voicing conspiracy theories about United's lack of penalties.

Yet in a sense Glazer's timing has been perfect. The supporters have all summer to appreciate the reality of the situation and decide whether learning to live with the takeover will be better than trying to obstruct it.

"It's not my football club any more," said Nick Towle, the chairman of Shareholders United, the body leading the campaign against Glazer's takeover. It never was.

The days of clubs being at one with their fans, in the sense that the gate receipts paid the team's wages, are long gone. Until relatively recently football's finances were small beer compared to big business, but then came the Premier League along with serious TV money and sponsorships.

Once clubs became public limited companies they were open to takeovers, hostile or benign. United supporters may feel they have been betrayed by the Irish business pair JP McManus and John Magnier, whose decision to sell their shares to Glazer gave him a controlling interest. But all McManus and Magnier have done is sell at a profit, which is surely what share dealing is about.

Manchester United's greatest enemy for the moment is uncertainty, an emotion widely shared by the bulk of the clubs in the four national divisions with Cambridge United, who have gone out of the league and into administration, not least among them. There never was only one United.

The opposite happened at Stamford Bridge two summers ago when, with the arrival of Roman Abramovich, Chelsea's debts vanished overnight. At the last count of personal wealth Glazer was some £7bn worse off than Abramovich, not to mention being twice as old. Unlike Abramovich he needs a quick and healthy return from his investment.

Such contrasts will hardly ease the fears of United followers the world over. Attempting to soothe their nerves Glazer has promised to make £20m a season available for new signings, which would this summer bring Manchester United's spending power into line with Wigan Athletic's.

Old Trafford supporters have little option but to wait and see if their fears about hikes in admission prices and the cost of merchandise are justified. Glazer may indeed regard Manchester United as a cash cow but Martin Edwards was hardly a reincarnation of Andrew Carnegie, making a fortune by selling off his shares following the 1991 flotation. Business was business then and it still is, though with a vengeance.

All of which makes it a rum time for the Premier League to be telling Lord Terence Burns, the man engaged in a review of the Football Association, that the FA is unsustainable in its present form. Given the lack of a shark net to spare a club like Manchester United the attentions of financial hammerhead like Glazer, the FA might feel entitled to say the same about the Premier League.

Whatever happens tomorrow, up or down, Norwich City fans are now entitled to feel more at ease than those of Manchester United. Norwich's entire team cost a quarter of the sum United paid for Wayne Rooney and even if they are relegated, the club's future is secure.

Meanwhile, Old Trafford may be catching echoes of mocking laughter born on an easterly wind from somewhere the other side of the Pennines. Or to be more precise, Elland Road, Leeds.